Follow-up visit adherence may be issue in patients with geographic atrophy

Up to 60% of patients with geographic atrophy failed to return for a follow-up visit after 2 years, according to data presented in a late-breaking oral session as part of the Retina Subspecialty Day at AAO 2020 Virtual by Ehsan Rahimy, MD, lead study author and surgical and medical vitreoretinal specialist at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.

In this retrospective study, 69,000 patients diagnosed with GA were analyzed for changes in visual acuity, disease progression, and occurrence of concurrent wet AMD, over 2 years.

After 12 months, 4.7% of patients with bilateral GA and 13.3% of patients with wet AMD in the contralateral eye progressed from GA to new-onset wet AMD. After 24 months, the rate was 8.2% in patients with bilateral GA and 21.6% in patients with wet AMD in the contralateral eye.

Researchers noted that patients usually presented to the first visit with relatively preserved vision, but those with extrafoveal and foveal GA lesions experience progressive vision loss at a rate of approximately 5 letters per year.

“Geographic atrophy remains an important unmet medical need in ophthalmology. As several new agents are being developed for the treatment of GA a detailed description of the real-world disease progression becomes essential,” said Dr Rahimy.

Reference
Rahimy E, et al. Late Breaking Developments, Part II – Evaluation of Geographic Atrophy (GA) Secondary to AMD in Real-World Clinical Practice: Analysis of the AAO IRIS Registry. Presented at: AAO 2020 Virtual.